NAM Board Votes In Favor Of Multinationals In Debate Over China’s Currency; Domestic Manufacturers Are Left Wondering What To Do

It’s beginning to look like NAM is thinking of itself as NABMM – National Association of Big Multinational Manufacturers.

While I’m not a big fan of protectionism, I’m even a smaller fan of currency manipulation. During the second world war, currency manipulation was used as a weapon of war. And it’s not clear to me that the current situation is all that different (except that there isn’t a side-by-side de-facto war going on).

I know the blogger in chief over at NAM reads this blog. I wonder if he’d like to hit the reply button and comment on this article. Has NAM really abandonned the small, domestic manufacturer?

manufacturingnews.com For members of the National Association of Manufacturers’ Domestic Manufacturers Group, September 28 will be a day to remember. Their two-year effort to persuade NAM to endorse a currency manipulation bill was rejected by the association’s executive committee and board of directors. Members of the Domestic Manufacturers Group (DMG) claim the loss was the result of opposition from the large multinational corporations that benefit from China’s pegged currency working in concert with NAM’s senior leaders intent on quashing an uprising. NAM leaders counter that the legislation was not going to force a sovereign nation of 1.3 billion to change its policies any time in the near future.

The NAM board vote is not sitting well with many of the domestic manufacturers that put so much emotional energy into the initiative. These companies — particularly in the metal forming industries — are struggling to remain competitive with the multinationals’ Chinese production and Chinese suppliers. They believe that the multinational companies are the real “protectionists” — defending unfair subsidies that the Chinese government is erecting in their favor, especially a currency that is estimated to be at least 25 percent, and perhaps as much as 60 percent, undervalued.

In an e-mail sent to NAM president Gov. John Engler, Nucor chairman and CEO Dan DiMicco said, “John — You just don’t get it.” NAM’s refusal to acknowledge unfair trade as being the primary cause of declining U.S. industrial competitiveness is a “blatant stab in the back” to domestic manufacturers, DiMicco wrote Engler. NAM’s efforts “have shown us that the current NAM does not represent domestic manufacturing interests […]